“Look at me when I’m talking to you”

Teachers shouldn’t just assume a child is not paying attention if they are seen “staring into the distance” when asked a question.

New research has found that looking away actually helps children to think of the answer. Psychologist Dr Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon and colleagues from the University of Stirling, have been investigating children’s gaze aversion, and she discusses their findings in the February issue of The Psychologist, out Thursday 29 January 2004.

Psychologists have known for some time that adults can switch off from environmental stimulation (both live faces and other sorts of visual displays) in order to concentrate better, a technique called gaze aversion.

When remembering information, thinking of an answer to a question, planning what we are going to say or speaking, we often close our eyes, look up at the sky, or look away from the person we are speaking to, especially when the task in hand is difficult. Until recently though no one had investigated whether children use gaze aversion in a similar way.

Several studies have now been carried out in this field. The findings of which are potentially important for the way children are seen to engage in learning situations.

Many cultures encourage children to ‘look at me while I’m speaking to you’, and interpret looking away as a sign of disinterest or disengagement. However, the new research has found that children also use gaze aversion to help them concentrate on difficult material.

Researchers have also found that gaze aversion in response to difficult questions is a skill that develops with age, rather than being an innate behavioural response to questions.

Children’s patterns of gaze promise to yield important clues to their thinking, concentration and mental processing that will be useful to parents, teachers, psychologists and others engaged in assessing children’s knowledge and development.

The team are looking to continue their research with a study into whether or not children who do look away answer more accurately, and whether teachers actually use these cues.